Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

The great demand of Elizabeth was the restoration of Calais, and at Cateau-Cambresis a treaty was concluded on the 2nd of April, 1559, by which the King of France actually engaged to surrender that town to England at the end of eight years, or pay to Elizabeth 500,000 crowns; and he agreed to deliver, as guarantee for this sum, four French noblemen and the bonds of eight foreign merchants. But to this article was appended another which, to any one in the least familiar with diplomacy, betrayed the fact that the whole was illusory, and that the French would have no difficulty, at the end of the prescribed term, in showing that England had in some way broken the contract. The article stipulated that if, within that period, Henry of France, or Mary of Scotland, should make any attempt against the realm or subjects of Elizabeth, they should forfeit all claim to the retention of that town; and if Elizabeth should infringe the peace with either of those monarchs, she should forfeit all claim to its surrender or to the penalty of 500,000 crowns. The public at once saw that the French would never relinquish their hold on Calais from the force of any such condition, and the indignation was proportionate. The Government, to divert the attention of the people from this flimsy pretence of eventual restoration, ordered the impeachment of Lord Wentworth, the late governor of the castle and of the Rysbank, on a charge of cowardice and treason. Wentworth, as he deserved, was acquitted by the jury; the captains were condemned, but the object of the trial being attained, their sentence was never carried into effect.

Elizabeth, at her accession, had assumed the title of Queen of France. Henry II. immediately, by way of retaliation, caused his daughter-in-law Mary (she had married the Dauphin in 1558) to be styled Queen of Scotland and England, and had the arms of England quartered with those of Scotland. Elizabeth, with her extreme sensitiveness to any claims upon her crown, and regarding this act as a declaration of her own illegitimacy and of Henry's assertion of Mary's superior right to the English throne, resented the proceeding deeply, and from that moment never ceased to plot against the peace and power of Mary till she drove her from her throne, made her captive, and finally deprived her of her life.

We have already shown that Henry VII. commenced, and Henry VIII. and Edward VI. continued, the system of bribing the Scottish nobility against their sovereign. Elizabeth, in pursuance of her plans against the Queen of Scots, now adopted the same practice, and kept in pay both the nobles and the Protestant leaders of Scotland. To understand fully her proceedings, we must, however, first take a hasty glance at the progress of the Reformation in Scotland. That kingdom received the Reformation in its simplest, most rigid, and severe form. The doctrines which had sprung up in republican Switzerland, under Calvin and Zwingli, were imbibed there by Knox and others in their most unbending hardness. There was little of the gentle and the pliant in their tenets, but a stern asceticism, which suited well with the grave and earnest character of the Scots. When summoned by Mary of Guise to appear in Edinburgh and answer for their conduct, the preachers, attended by thousands of the respective congregations, presented themselves in such a formidable shape, that the Regent declared that she meant no injury to them. A period of such tranquillity succeeded, that the leaders of the Reform party—the Earl of Glencairn, Lord Lorne, son of the Earl of Argyll, Erskine of Dun, Lord James Stuart, afterwards the Regent Murray—on the 3rd of December, 1557, drew up that League and Covenant which was destined to work such wonders in Scotland, to rouse the suffering Reformers into a church militant, to put arms into the hands of the excited peasants, brace the sword to the side of the preacher, and, through civil war and scenes of strange suffering, bloodshed, and resistance on moor and mountain, to work out the freedom of the faith for ever in Scotland. The Covenant engaged all who subscribed it, in a solemn vow, "in the presence of the Majesty of God and His congregation," to spread the Word by every means in their power, to maintain the Gospel and defend its ministers against all tyranny; and it pronounced the most bitter anathemas against the superstition, the idolatry, and the abominations of Rome. This bond received the signatures of the Earls of Glencairn, Argyll, and Morton, Lord Lorne, Erskine of Dun, and many other nobles and gentlemen, who assumed the name of the Lords of the Congregation: and from this hour it became a scandalous apostacy for any one to flinch or fall away from this "Solemn League and Covenant."

Mary at first temporised, but eventually determined to stand firm. In a convention of the clergy held in Edinburgh, in March, 1559, the Lords of the Congregation demanded that the bishops should be elected by the gentlemen of the diocese, and the clergy by the people of each parish. This was peremptorily refused, and it was decreed that the practice of using English prayers should cease, no language should be permitted in public worship but Latin, and this was followed by a proclamation of the Queen-Regent, ordering all people to conform strictly to the established religion and to attend Mass daily; and, in an interview with the leaders of the Protestants, she showed them the commands which she had received on these heads from France, and summoned the chief ministers of the Reformed body to appear before a Parliament to be held at Stirling to answer for their conduct in introducing heretical practices and doctrines.

At this moment Knox arrived from France. It was determined by the Lords of the Congregation to attend their ministers to Stirling in such numbers as to overawe the Government, and Knox volunteered to take his part with the other preachers. The nobles and the people mustered at Perth. There Knox preached a stirring sermon; a riot was the result, and some religious houses were sacked.

The Queen-Regent, at the news of this destruction, became furious. She vowed she would raze the town of Perth to the ground, and sow it with salt as a sign of eternal desolation. She summoned to her aid Arran, now Duke of Chatelherault, the Earl of Athole, and D'Oyselles, the French commander, and being joined by two of the Lords of the Congregation, Argyll and Lord James Stuart, who were averse from the outrages committed, on the 18th of May she marched to Perth. The Congregation hastened to address letters both to the Queen-Regent and the two Lords of the Congregation, who, to their indignation, had joined her. They told Mary of Guise that hitherto they had served her willingly; but if she persisted in her persecutions, they should abandon her and defend themselves. They would obey the queen and her husband if permitted to worship in their own way, otherwise they would be subject to no mortal man. To the two Lords of the Congregation they wrote first in mild expostulation, but they soon advanced their tone to threats of excommunication, and the doom of traitors, if they did not come from amongst the persecutors. They addressed another letter "To the generation of Anti-Christ, the pestilent prelates and their shavelings in Scotland;" and they warned them that, if they did not desist from their persecutions, they would exterminate them, as the Israelites did the wicked Canaanites.

Matters were proceeding to extremity when Glencairn arrived in the Protestant camp with 2,500 men. This made the Queen-Regent pause, and an agreement was effected by means of Argyll and the Lord James, by which toleration was again granted, and the Queen-Regent engaged that no Frenchman should approach within three miles of Perth, a condition which she characteristically evaded by garrisoning it with Scottish troops in French pay. Knox and Willock had an interview with Argyll and the Lord James, and sharply upbraided them with appearing in arms against their brethren, to which these nobles replied that they had done it only as a means of arbitrating for peace; but the Congregation took means to bind them in future by framing a new covenant, to which every member swore obedience, engaging to defend the Congregation or any of its members when menaced by the enemies of their religion.

They were soon called upon to prove their sincerity. The Queen-Regent—totally regardless of the treaty just entered into—the very same day that the Lords of the Congregation quitted Perth, entered it with Chatelherault, D'Oyselles, and a body of French soldiers. She deprived the chief magistrates of their authority because they favoured the Reformation; made Charteris of Kinfauns, a man of infamous character, provost of the city, and left a garrison of troops in French pay to support him.

The Lords of the Congregation assembled at St. Andrews, and with them Knox, who had come, as he said, to the conclusion that to be rid of the rooks it was necessary to pull down their nests. Their action was prompt; Perth surrendered at the first assault. Argyll and the Lord James had succeeded in checking the march of the Queen-Regent; and on their advance to Linlithgow, she and the French forces evacuated Edinburgh, falling back to Dunbar; whilst the Covenanting army, entering Linlithgow, pulled down the altars and images, destroyed the relics, and then advanced on Edinburgh, which they entered in triumph on the 29th of June, 1559.